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Gesänge des Orients, Op 77

Introduction

Between 1906 and 1918 there was a hiatus in Strauss’s song composition, but these years were otherwise highly productive of vocal music. Partly occasioned by a lengthy wrangle over copyright with the publishers Bote & Bock, the break coincided with his most important period of operatic composition, during which Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos and Die Frau ohne Schatten all appeared. Most of his later songs reflect the development of his style, especially in the complexity of accompanying textures and the extension of his harmonic language.

The Gesänge des Orients were composed in 1928, shortly after Die Aegyptische Helena, and are settings of adaptations from the Persian and the Chinese by Hans Bethge, whose anthology Die chinesische Flöte had already inspired Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. The change in style from Strauss’s earlier songs is marked, with a generally more ascetic palette of colour and a quasi-oriental application of ornament, especially in the first and fourth songs, each of which contemplates an aspect of the beloved. All five songs are vertiginously high, and originally intended for tenor, though interestingly dedicated to Strauss’s beloved Elisabeth Schumann and her conductor–husband Karl Alwin.

Recordings

'Christine Brewer … combine opulent, blazing tone, fearless top notes and surprising agility' (The Daily Telegraph)'Christine Brewer in magisterial voice … a major project, beautifully performed and presented' (The Independent)» More

In the first song the Persian poet Hafiz (1320–1391) extols the finely curved eyebrows and bright gaze of his beloved, which he compares to the light of Paradise. Strauss matches this deliberate hyperbole with long-breathed, high-arching phrases, and cool but ardent harmonies decorated with elaborate filigree in the piano part. The vocal tessitura, as in all of these songs, is extremely high, demanding supreme control on the part of the singer.

This ebullient drinking song illustrates the worldly side of the Persian poet Hafiz, blasphemously prepared to steep every verse of the Koran in wine. Strauss echoes his bravado with clashing triads and brilliant demisemiquaver flourishes in the piano, giving the whole an unstoppable rhythmic verve.

The chinoiserie of Liebesgeschenke, the only Chinese poem of the five, lies chiefly in the decorative intertwining of voice and piano, illustrating by turns the overhanging boughs of peach blossom, or the darting flight of the swallow (these are the love-gifts of the title). Stylistically the song harks back to the Brentano-Lieder Op 68, its high tessitura, sustained notes and delicate coloratura making similar demands on the singer, while the lightness of the piano part – the left hand is often in the treble clef – contributes to the overall sense of chaste devotion.

In this, the grandest of the five songs, Hafiz declares that his lover’s beauty stands the entire world order on its head, more powerful than kings, outshining the sun, delivering life or death. Even her sins have no weight, for the angels are too taken up with loving her to record them. Strauss weaves the piano part into a richly embroidered tapestry, an imperial processional carrying the voice along on successive waves, with a touching shift to a more personal mode for the final stanza. The song is, as it were, the public face of Ihre Augen, the cool C major of that song transformed to the more richly coloured D flat.

The pearls of my soul
Have no other function, you sweet one,
Than that I should strew them
Before your small capricious feet.

As long as my pulse beats,
I belong to you. When one day
I am buried, I shall as dust
Whirl up from the grave and kiss
The hem of your garment,
Full of love.

You think you say hurtful things to me.
You are mistaken.
Your bitter remarks issue from lips
Which are so sweet that everything
Which reaches my ear
Is but charming flattery.

Never shall you and I agree.
Whatever I do for you, you deride,
I shake off the grief you inflict on me.
If I adorn you with precious things,
You are angry with me. And your words of anger –
I accept them smilingly as a gracious greeting.

I should like to weave from your hair
An endless braid,
To swing myself
From star to star,
To proclaim your beauty joyfully
To all the encircling spheres!

The last of the five Gesänge des Orients is a breathless high-wire act for both singer and pianist, its clashing ‘wrong-note’ harmonies and vocal aerobatics adding piquancy to the inherent masochism of the text. The hectic 6/8 gallop-cum-waltz rhythm is one that Strauss could always deploy effectively at moments of operatic intrigue, and it propels the singer into the stratosphere, ending – after pages of high notes – on a ringing top C. It is small wonder that these fascinating songs are rarely, if ever performed.